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Giving clues to a person's personality through the decor of their bedroom, particularly wall posters.

A quick way of giving hints about a person's personality without spending a lot of time on exposition is to show their bedroom. This is particularly true from late childhood to college age, when people tend to have very idiosyncratic decorating tastes. (Before that, the child's parents/guardians tend to choose the decor, and as people mature, many of them feel less compelled to "mark their territory" quite so fiercely. And if a couple is sharing a room, it will tend to blend their tastes to an acceptable medium.)

The posters and other decorations of a bedroom can often convey such information as gender and approximate age, hobbies, religious affiliation, the region the story takes place in, approximately what year the story takes place, and the tolerance level of the parents if any (parents, that is). A change in posters can indicate a similar change in the inhabitant's interests or maturity level. (And whether they're torn down or gently put away tells the audience a lot about the feelings of the character.) If the set designers are careless, they can oversell the clutter effect, or create a false impression by putting all the things that were cool when they were kids on a contemporary teenager's wall.

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For a twist, sometimes the posters will reveal the "true face" of a character, such as a burly Jerk Jock's room being plastered with unicorns and rainbows, while the Girl Next Door has decorated her room in Frazetta barbarian posters with black curtains and pagan symbols.

There are a number of poster stereotypes. For example, posters of Einstein, Che, Jim Morrison or some kind of Monet in a college student's dorm room. On the other hand, expect a Scarface (1983) poster in a gangsta-wannabe's room. In addition, a boy's room will nearly always be rather messy and will have at least one swimsuit model poster, while a girl's room will nearly always feature posters and magazine cut-outs of her favorite singers (heart scribbles optional), plus a vanity with mirror and cosmetics.

This trope is usually found in visual media, although print media will sometimes describe a bedroom's decor — and the conclusions the narrator draws from it.

My Hero Academia does this with most students of Class 1-A in order to further establish their personalities. Many bring Hidden Depths, but some are so obvious and predictable that a flashy, extravagant character gets criticized for having a flashy, extravagant room.

Ranma ½: Tatewaki Kunō has pictures of Akane and the Pigtailed Girl in his room. For a time he replaced them with Nabiki pictures, then all three of them at once.

Yuri in Yuri!!! on Ice has a room full of posters of Victor Nikiforov. Which leads to a very awkward situation when that very Victor is trying to enter his room and Yuri keeps him out just long enough to hide all the posters.

Robin Series: Tim Drake had a room filled with band posters when he still lived at his biological father's home. Amusingly his girlfriend had a prominent flattering poster of his close friend Superboy over her bed to Tim's endless annoyance.

Superman's foster son, Chris, has an entire room full of Superman merchandise. And no, that's not Clark being vain  he mentions how embarrassed he was buying so much stuff with his own face on it.

Comic Strips

Hilarious example from Dick Tracy: one storyline introduced a scary-looking "goth" kid. Eventually, we see his room, which has posters of Goths. As in Visigoths. As in burly bearded men in fur armor wielding axes. Almost certainly intentional, as the storyline was (unusually for Dick Tracy) about not judging by appearances.

Phoebe's bedroom in Phoebe and Her Unicorn is heavy on pink and unicorns. Unlike many girls with similar decor, she actually knows a unicorn.

Films  Animation

Tangled: Rapunzel's tower is filled from top to bottom with paintings that she drew the whole 18 years she was there. The growing lack of space is lampshaded in her "I Want" Songand it's even a plot point, since her bedroom is filled with subconsciously drawn versions of the sun symbol that is the kingdom's insignia and alerts her that she is the lost princess.

I'll paint the walls some more  there must be room somewhere...

In Toy Story, the Western posters and decor in Andy's room shift to space-themed items after the arrival of Buzz Lightyear, much to Woody's dismay. Even the bedspread changes! Also consider the Darker and Edgier decor of the troubled Sid's room.

In Toy Story 3, this comes up again when we are shown a fairly wide shot of Andy's room—and how it's changed since his childhood.

Films  Live-Action

Kat's bedroom in 10 Things I Hate About You is plastered with posters of alternative girl bands. Her sister Bianca's room is rather juvenile in floral and white.

In Don't Tell Mom the Babysitter's Dead, the babysitter stumbles into the teenage boy's bedroom and reacts in horror at all the heavy metal posters on the walls. In fact, it gives her a fatal heart attack and kicks off the plot!

Not covering all the walls, but hilarious: In The Lost Boys, the first thing Sam does upon moving into their new room is hang up a poster of a shirtless Rob Lowe.

The original The Parent Trap. Susan's bed at camp has photos and magazine clippings of 1960s teen heartthrobs. Sharon isn't so cool, so she has no idea who Ricky Nelson is. "Oh, your boyfriend." Susan gasps in disbelief. "I wish he was! You mean you never heard of him? Where do you come from, outer space?"

In Troll 2, Holly's room has posters of Tom Cruise and Johnny Depp. Joshua's room is a veritable treasure trove of Product Placement.

The Ultimate Christmas Present has Allie's room with consists of posters of boy bands such as *NSYNC and Backstreet Boys.

In the first Wayne's World film Garth's bedroom is shown in one scene. As should probably be expected, it's covered in posters of hard rock and Heavy Metal bands.

Played for Laughs in a teen sex comedy (I think it was Loose Screws) where a teenage Fille Fatale is seducing a handsome boy when her daddy arrives home unexpectedly. She immediately reverses all the posters on her bedroom to more innocent versions and brings out the teddy bears — unfortunately the boy isn't as quick on the uptake and is chased away by the outraged father.

In Paddington, typical teenager Judy has an entire wall covered in various posters and pictures; Jonathan, who wants to be an astronaut when he grows up, has a huge mural of a planet seen from space.

Literature

In the Alex Rider book Point Blanc, students are encouraged to decorate their rooms. So that the Big Bad can impersonate them better.

In Moving Pictures, Victor discovers that Ginger has decorated her bedroom with posters for the "clicks" she's starred in.

In other Discworld novels, some characters are conversely described by how neat and impersonal their bedrooms are. Malvolio Bent's room is entirely plain, simple and undecorated except for a closet containing a dark secret, exactly like himself.

Juliet's bedroom is mentioned as having everything painted pink with little yellow crowns, except for the beer crates holding up the bed in Unseen Academicals. As the color scheme and decorations were picked by her late mother, it seems to indicate that Juliet has not yet truly entered adult life.

Subverted in Everworld: when David sees Senna's room he's frustrated that it provides no clue about her personality; the only decorations look like they came from an interior designer, the only books she owns are for school, etc.

Ron's room is entirely orange due to Chudley Cannons Quidditch posters, bedspread, etc., and even more chaotic than usual because, of course, all the players are moving. His sister, Ginny, likewise has posters of her favorite team, the Holyhead Harpies.

Luna Lovegood painted her bedroom ceiling with portraits of Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny and Neville linked together with the word "friends" repeated a thousand times in gold ink. Somehow this comes off as more poignant than unsettling.

Every year, Dean carefully hangs up his poster for the West Ham Association Football team in the boys' dorm room.

In Isabel Allende's novel The House of the Spirits, Alba Trueba was granted permission to paint the walls of her room as a little girl, and she uses them as a journal of sorts until she is well into teenagehood. The last thing painted is a little heart, meaning that she has fallen in love for the very first time. Given that she eventually is revealed as the writer/narrator of the whole story, this is kind of prophetic.

Marci Jensen from I Am Not a Serial Killer has one of these, which John describes as less decorated than attacked. In this case, its not specified what the posters are of, just that she has a lot of them, sometimes layered messily over each other, establishing her as enthusiastic personality and normalcy relative to John.

The lodgings of Sherlock Holmes at 221b Baker Street had a number of frequently mentioned decorations, including pictures of General Gordon and Henry Ward Beecher, and VR written in bullet holes, which all give clues to the personalities of the residents.

Don't forget the Reichenbach landscape over the fireplace

Or the stuck-to-the-mantlepiece-with-a-knife correspondence.

Or the chemistry set in the corner.

Or the insane amounts of papers from various cases he has lying everywhere. (At one point, Watson even gets annoyed with this one)

Live-Action TV

In the All That skit, Whateverrr!!, Gina and Jessica had a room with a girly wallpaper filled with posters of rock and pop bands and artists such as Matchbox 20, Fuel, Sugar Ray, Jewel, Ben Folds Five, Joey McIntyre, etc.

The Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode "The Freshman", in which vampires were grabbing college students and making it look as though they'd just dropped out. They'd run a sweep to determine whether the poster left behind should be Claude Monet's "Waterlilies" or Gustav Klimt's "The Kiss"; the two are the most common prints in real-world college dorm rooms.

This trope was used in a programme on Channel 4 about puberty, where we see the a boy age from being 8 years to his teens (as though it were time-lapse footage) in his bedroom. When he becomes a teenager, his posters suddenly change to those of girls.

Played with on Chuck. All through the series, the Hollywood Nerd main character has a TRON poster on his wall. We get it: he's a nerd, and very, very rarely has women in a position to see his bedroom. Then, in the last few episodes of season two, he takes it down for the first time and we see that on the back of it he's been drawing a web of notes this whole time about the Intersect, Bryce, Fulcrum, etc. He's been taking a proactive role in his life despite appearances to the contrary, he's been prying into the world of espionage he's so scared of, he's been watching the details of everything that goes on around him... and he's been hiding all that in the one place none of the people spying on him would notice, because it's just part of the scenery.

In the Criminal Minds episode "Elephant's Memory" the spree killing youth is partially profiled by the stuff in his room, which included things like a mirror painted black and posters relating to James Dean (Reid notes its kind of disturbing how the killer had more posters of the car accident that killed Dean than Dean himself).

Max's room in Dani's House illustrates that he's a young boy and thus has loads of posters of stuff boys his age would be interested in, such as Duel Masters and Doctor Who.

Doctor Who: In "Rose", what little we see of the title character's bedroom is very pink.

Doogie Howser, M.D.: Doogie Howser was obviously a genius, but was also funny and a bit cynical. He has a Save the Humans poster on his door. He also has posters of James Dean, Marilyn Monroe and Albert Einstein, among others.

Played for laughs in a series of sketches on The Fast Show, where the posters plastering a teenage girl's room kept changing to whichever famous person she "really loved" at the moment.

Paris Gellar of Gilmore Girls has a poster of Noam Chomsky on her wall, and Rory has a couple of similar smarty-pants posters as well.

On The Good Place, Eleanor describes Jason's "budhole" as "12-year-old boy means 13-year-old boy", since it's filled with video games, posters of cars, models, and female celebrities, and all-around immature things. Certainly a quick and easy way to prove that Jason is nothing at all like the wise Buddhist monk he'd been masquerading as up to that episode.

One of these appeared at least once on The Muppet Show, perhaps most notably when Joan Baez sang "Honest Lullaby". Posters included John Travolta and (maybe) Luke Skywalker.

In Rescue Me, most of Tommy's interaction with his nephew Damian takes place in Damian's room and showcases his many posters proclaiming his love of anime and alt-rock.

Used as a minor plot point on Skins when Katie, faced with her twin sister Emily's blossoming homosexuality, has a good look at Emily's side of the room comparing it to her own: While Katie's side has posters of hot boys, including Daniel Craig, Emily's side is covered in art and photos of women, including Audrey Hepburn, possibly Fergie, and a particular focus on a Blondie poster. With a wall full of chicks, Katie finally has the physical evidence that yes, Emily's gay. Astute viewers may notice that Emily's posters have actually changed from the first appearance of their room in the first episode, when they was more musical (the most prominent poster was the Plain White Ts).

Jake on Two and a Half Men decorated his room at Charlie's house with pin-ups. This is not what bothers Charlie; what bothers him is that he nailed them on the wall. His father, Alan, expresses disappointment with the fact that to make way for them Jake tore down his formerly precious (but now uninteresting to him) Harry Potter posters. It turns out Jake hasn't quite grown out of it though.

Underbelly Benji is introduced with a tour of his room, which includes such oddities as a Scarface (1983) picture, kickboxing trophies in a cluttered mess, a cross, and gym equipment which he is currently using.

Mulder's office is a non-bedroom example with mild Room Full of Crazy and String Theory overtones. It is completely covered in photos, clippings, and posters of paranormal phenomena (mostly UFOs and aliens), including the iconic "I Want to Believe" poster, and a slight smattering of books and memorabilia on the topic.

Conspiracy Theorist Blaine Faulkner's bedroom in the episode Jose Chung's 'From Outer Space' would also qualify. Notable in that it is basically Mulder's office turned Up to ElevenIN A BEDROOM! with much stronger Room Full of Crazy vibes. It even contains a poster identical to Mulder's which simply reads "I Believe".

Theatre

In Oklahoma!, the walls of the smokehouse where Jud lives are plastered with pink pictures of women from old covers of Police Gazette.

Video Games

In Bully, Jimmy's room changes over time, gaining a new wall ornament for each major mission he completes.

In Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, in one of their many codec conversations, Rose complains to Jack about how bare his bedroom is, there's "not even a poster". Jack had been little more than a tool of his controllers up to that point. He claims to remember little of his past.

No More Heroes: Travis Touchdown, another Otaku, also has many posters plastering his walls and shelves full of plastic figurines.

The Sims naturally has posters and wall art for your virtual doll houses, in particular, there will often be an item that consists of multiple posters and other wall hangings with various themes that would suit a child or teen bedroom, to invoke this trope.

Super Paper Mario: Fort Francis. Okay, sure, if you want to get technical, it's more of an entire fortress than just a bedroom, per se, but still...

Character introductions in Homestuck are typically handled with a wide shot of the character's bedroom accompanied with a short biography. Naturally, many of the rooms are of this nature. The most extreme example is almost certainly Jake English's room. That room is so plastered by movie posters you can't see the wall.

Rets' room in Mistakes Of Youth, in which every inch of the wall has been taken up by anime posters, most of which display little girls.

Miko of Prague Race has a bunch of overlaying posters on the walls in the corner of his room where he keeps his desk. While several of them look like concert posters there are a number of art posters in the mix as well.

In MSF High Forum, pretty much all the PCs are encouraged to do this, in part because the bedrooms are meant to be reflections of the chars. Mitchell's characters especially tried to invoke this, even with the beds! (Israfel has a bed that looks good, but is bad under the covers, Jess has a military bed, Michelle's is just a bunch of sheets, and Seram's is a large black bed with a curtain.)

Twisted in The Nostalgia Critic's review of Disney Afternoon, as the point is not that he has posters on the (studio) wall, but that he's delusional and gets really angry at any intrusion of reality.

Both Spoony and Allison Pregler (who even used her wall as the background for title cards before hiring an artist).

While not much detail has gone into it, the interior of Anna Chase's room in Survival of the Fittest is implied to be this on a few occasions. It's mentioned that she has a lot of posters and figurines in her bedroom, of course relating to her interests (horror media and anime). In post-game, it's revealed that before she came home that her parents removed her posters and figurines from the room, out of a concern that she would be triggered by them, much to her mild annoyance.

Western Animation

Played straight in Code Lyoko. Jérémie, the computer geek, has the obligatory Einstein poster in his room. Ulrich, the martial art jock, has pencak silat posters on his half of the dorm he shares with Odd. And Sissi, the Alpha Bitch, has fashion models and girl bands poster in her bedroom — along with the aforementioned vanity with mirror and cosmetics.

Tiffany's room is covered with poster-sized pictures of herself, showing exactly how narcissistic she is.

Daria, on the other hand, has a poster of Franz Kafka and another that seemingly portrays a human skeleton protruding from the earth. Perhaps an archeological dig? Her room had very few posters besides that one, since it was formerly occupied by someone psychotic and still had the padding on the walls, which she probably thought was cool enough by itself.

In the King of the Hill episode "Sleight of Hank", Bobby (who's twelve or thirteen) wants to paint his blue bedroom walls with "white, fluffy clouds." Hank naturally dislikes the idea but eventually gives in.

In The Loud House, All of the Loud siblings' bedrooms, excluding Lola and Lana's and Lisa and Lily's, have some of the posters. Even Luna had rock music posters on her room.

In Milo Murphy's Law, Milo's room is decorated with various warning and road signs. There's also a photo of some firefighters hanging right next to his loft bed (why someone so accident-prone has one is a mystery), a music stand and a dog bed for Diogee.

Miraculous Ladybug: In case her actions around him aren't enough of a reminder, Marinette's bedroom is filled with photos and pictures of her crush Adrien. Doubles as something of a Stalker Shrine, since she's also got his schedule written down somewhere.

The Simpsons: When Homer re-enrolled in college, he briefly turned his bedroom into a dorm room with the use of cinder block bookshelves and the poster of Albert Einstein sticking out his tongue.

In South Park, Kyle has the classic "Einstein sticking his tongue out" poster, and sometimes a poster of the Jewish rapper Matisyahu. Stan has a poster for Street Warrior, an obvious knock-off of Road Warrior. Cartman's room sometimes has a pin-up of Mel Gibson in his Braveheart costume (Cartman admires him for his anti-Semitism). Wendy is seen to have a pin-up of Russell Crowe in her bedroom or bathroom.

Steven's room has various action figures, a few books, a TV and video games. He also has posters for shows/movies called Star Battlers and Ninja Squad (the latter of which was replaced with the more depressingNew Ninja Squad when Steven was trying to act more mature). You can also see a copy of Sailor Moon on his nightstand, which makes sense for someone being raised by Magical Girl Warriors from space.

Each of the Crystal Gems have their own room in the Temple, where the environment actually is designed to fit their personalities. Amethyst's is a total pigsty with many large puddles that you can swim in; Pearl's is more elegant, with tall pillars of water you can stand on. Averted with Rose's old room: it's basically a magical holodeck, so it could have theoretically been just about anything when she was around to use it.

Here's an interest analysis of Jaime's room that points out how little sense it makes.

Wally's room has a poster with The Flash's symbol, another which might be Batman, an unidentified burly man (maybe a wrestler?) and, of course, a bikini model.

Artemis is an interesting example, as the main feature of her room is an Alice in Wonderland poster left behind by her runaway sister, the supervillain Cheshire. She also has a poster on her side of the room, but it's just a vaguely-designed symbol with no apparent meaning.

Real Life

The ubiquity of this trope with students is why universities around the world hold regular poster sales. College/university dorm rooms are often extremely dull and institutional-looking, and housing rules usually prevent students from making permanent modifications to the room like painting the walls or nailing up proper paintings, mirrors, wall hangings, or picture frames. Posters, which can be taken down at the end of the year or semester, serve as a substitute for the ability to really decorate. Sometimes annoyingly pointless in British universities, where many halls of residence will prohibit the hanging of posters, flags etc. In this regard, blue painter's tape is a university student's best friend because it can be used to hang lots and lots of posters without damaging the walls in any way.

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